The Blue Mountains Wildplant Rescue Service (BMWRS) - the first of its kind in Australia - was formed to help protect and promote the natural values of the Blue Mountains. It has been hailed as a model for communities around Australia working in a practical way to conserve and extend local biodiversity and to save remnant bushland from sprawling development.

Wildplant Rescue Service was formally established in 1994 as a community driven, not-for-profit organisation, based in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

It was a new and innovative concept for saving the natural plant heritage in urban areas of the Blue Mountains.

The concept evolved in January 1993 when Mikla Lewis, founder of the organisation, was working alone to rescue plants from a block of land destined for imminent development. It occurred to Mikla that if a group of people were working together, so many more plants could be saved.

Mikla had been instrumental in the establishment and management of the NSW Wildlife Information and Rescue Service (WIRES) nearly a decade earlier. She reasoned that the idea of a network of volunteers working to save native plants could be just as effective.

Read more about our history here.